The San Antonio Super-Villains: Why Gregg Popovich Is an Evil Genius

"Nights off" is what Spurs announcer Sean Elliot likes to call them. Put that way, it sounds so benign, so humane. San Antonio, an aging team bracing itself for a deep playoff run, is doing what any rational enterprise would do: Conserve resources in an effort to realize a long-term goal. The Spurs, in their infinite wisdom, continue to innovate. The sport marches on as we all look on in awe. Gregg Popovich has struck again.

Except these "nights off"—shrewd as they may be for the Spurs' self-interest—put the organization in an awkward position. When the Spurs don't show up, it tampers with the basic law of sports: That both teams will play hard and produce a meaningful outcome. The outcome will be entered into the record, which will in turn paint a complete picture of the regular season. That picture will be used to determine which teams will make the playoffs and who they will play against. Oh, and as collateral damage, it fucks over ticket-buyers and cable subscribers who want to get the best product for their money.

The question is, should any of this bother Gregg Popovich? On the surface, he's certainly not violating any rule or neglecting his responsibilities as head coach of the Spurs. He's trying to win. The Spurs will win enough to make the playoffs and maybe even push late for a top seed. If Pop were to rest players too much, the Spurs would be compromised and the entire strategy would backfire. Compare what he's doing to tanking, that other great scourge upon the NBA's competitive landscape: Under the current system, a bad team is (in theory) rewarded for losing games with a higher draft position. The Spurs must constantly balance the need to rest with the need to win a certain amount.

What Popovich is doing is almost certainly helping his team. What suffers, though, is every other team. There's a case to be made that Popovich is trolling other contenders, or the NBA, or the networks that end up broadcasting meaningless Spurs games. Some have even suggested that he's trolling no one in particular, that he just can't help himself. One could argue that the Spurs are playing possum, hiding themselves in plain sight until it's time to crank it up for the playoffs. None of this quite gets at the problem, though, which is that the Spurs destabilize the entire NBA. They become a randomizing force, letting their personal schedule dictate the way the season plays out.

Imagine a perfect NBA where every player gives it his all for 82 games. Good teams deserve to win, even against other good teams. Bad teams deserve to lose, which is why the draft exists to help balance things out. The Spurs will rest against good teams, they'll rest against bad team, they'll rest if it's a big game or a game of zero consequence. If the Spurs-at-rest lose to another good team, they inflate that team's record, which can have implications for the playoffs; if they lose to a team on the cusp of the playoffs, it comes at the expense of other teams fighting for a chance to make the postseason. If they lose to a bad team, they distract them from their long journey toward the bottom of the standings.

If it seems like I'm overstating the consequences here, think about how many playoff matchups are decided by a game or two, or how often lottery odds come down to a few final games. It's like the Spurs are perpetuating the opposite of tanking—they're making teams better than they're supposed to be, which in turn handicaps all those around them. Ironically, none of this really affects the Spurs. They are almost guaranteed to make the playoffs and have a funny way of being completely immune to match-ups. The fate of other teams are far more contingent. The Spurs don't have the same problems as these mere mortals and thus need not conduct themselves accordingly.

This is the dark side of Popovich and the Spurs. What's best for them isn't always best for the league; the same intelligence that earns him acclaim can also cause structural problems for the league as a whole. That's not to say that Popovich is two-faced or conflicted. Quite the opposite: He knows what he needs to do for his team and, Hobbes-like, could care less what happens to anyone else. That's a strange reversal of the common perception of the Spurs as the Good Guys, upholders of the Right Way gospel who stood for something more honorable, more reputable than the rest of the league. We even saw some of this during these past Finals, when San Antonio's style was praised for its effortless (and devastatingly effective) team play.

The truth is, the Spurs have never really been the league's moral compass. The Right Way to do basketball was never about saving the world—it was about saving themselves. We were never right to view them as some kind of hardwood mega-church; all along, the Spurs have in fact worked more like a cutting-edge corporation, trying to find ways to do basketball better than anyone else without ever running afoul of the rules. In this case, there's nothing being broken. What we're realizing, though, is that the Spurs aren't above a little bending.